Sullla's Ideas for a New Civ

[ohioastronomy]

I smell the hyper-conservatism of game players in the commentary here. The split tactical map idea has a lot of strengths - and I'll predict right now that it will be in the next version of Civ regardless of who designs it. Quite simply, it gives the folks who want a tactical feel an outlet, while allowing those who just want stack v. stack a quick automation choice (what they failed to do with the lack of stacking in Civ 5).

For me, recognizing that the Civ 5 lack-of-stacking model on the strategic map is just awful is pretty important for any successor. And it looks to me as if the folks panning this are the ones who like the Civ 5 model, and there is no way that we'll be able to reach consensus on this.

 

[ohioastronomy]

That is a statement which I don't really understand.

A tactical overlay should somehow be the dream of anybody loving 1upt (or at least being ok with it).

No - because the folks critiquing Sulla don't want the Civ 5 combat model altered at all.

 

[ElWanderer]

An interesting read. I can't say I agree with everything but it's a good way to spark discussion.

In every strategy game I've played with a tactical overlay, I felt like I had to play out every combat manually because it was rare that using auto-resolve or allowing the AI to control my units didn't feel like kicking myself in the head.

Yes. I found the Rome: Total War auto-resolver to be a bit of a joke - you'd go in with a massive force against a few measly rebels and end up with stupidly high casualties and a "stalemate" or "minor victory" result meaning you had to fight them again the next turn. This combined with the limited ways of retraining most of the troop types ("why are half my irreplaceable Cretan Archers dead? Were they not standing at the back, separated from the rebel swordsmen by two lines of legionnaires? Now I'm going to have to sail back to Crete and hope there are some more available for hire") made me avoid it like the plague. But it was also annoying having to play out every single minor battle.

Edit: of course if someone can program a really decent auto-resolver, this problem disappears.

Did I really read a bit that said city towers should have an infinite (tactical map) range? I hope I was hallucinating.

As for research:
I haven't played the original Master of Orion, but I have the sequel. In MOO2 the research worked differently (as far as I'm aware), in that if you researched a tech it would show you the two or three new items/abilities that the tech unlocked, and you had to choose which one of them you wanted - the other options could only then be obtained from other races. Certain races were "creative" and would always be given everything a tech allows. Others were "uncreative" and didn't even get a choice - they were assigned one of the items at random with each new tech. I always ended up playing "creative" races as I found it rather unfun not being able to unlock all the goodies each time, and in games where I wasn't creative, I could never seem to get the missing items from other races by fair means or foul. So I wouldn't be a fan of the missing techs approach. The "great people can research the missing techs" idea was an interesting tie-in, though.

 

[Sullla]

Thanks to those of you who took the time to read the very long article. I agree that some of these ideas are rough around the edges and need more polishing. Some areas I've had further thoughts on, and could say more about them now, but honestly this is already monstrously long for a project that's never going to happen. I'm not willing to compromise on the combat system though. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for refinement, but this is the way I'd want to implement things if I were actually making this game. The objections are tactical/strategic levels are combat are perfectly correct, I'm not disagreeing with you guys on that. At the same time, I don't see a better way to implement very large scale battles with 100s or 1000s of units on both sides, which is something that I've always dreamed of having in Civilization. If you stay on the strategic map, the system will simply bog down with too many units. As I wrote in the article, I'd make sure to have an auto-resolve combat feature so that players could totally ignore the tactical map if desired. The challenge, of course, would be writing a good auto-resolve function to make sure it all worked, and I'm not pretending that would be easy.

Regardless though, thanks again for taking the time to read.

 

[MkLh]

Have you played a game on the Earth Map with accurate start locations as Rome? Try it some time and tell me that the 1UPT convention cannot be a game killer. Seriously. The Italian peninsula is 1 hex wide. That's 1 hex for a worker and a soldier and THAT IS IT. You cannot fit ANYONE else on that hex. Not now, not ever, not unless you use a mod, which pretty much defeats the purpose of 1UPT. You can modify the map this way or that, but the problem persists.

What exactly is the problem with that? No space for units? There could be a possibility to stack units in cities. I too think the problem is not 1UPT per se but the way it was implemented.

 

[ohioastronomy]

Thanks to those of you who took the time to read the very long article. I agree that some of these ideas are rough around the edges and need more polishing. Some areas I've had further thoughts on, and could say more about them now, but honestly this is already monstrously long for a project that's never going to happen. I'm not willing to compromise on the combat system though. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for refinement, but this is the way I'd want to implement things if I were actually making this game. The objections are tactical/strategic levels are combat are perfectly correct, I'm not disagreeing with you guys on that. At the same time, I don't see a better way to implement very large scale battles with 100s or 1000s of units on both sides, which is something that I've always dreamed of having in Civilization. If you stay on the strategic map, the system will simply bog down with too many units. As I wrote in the article, I'd make sure to have an auto-resolve combat feature so that players could totally ignore the tactical map if desired. The challenge, of course, would be writing a good auto-resolve function to make sure it all worked, and I'm not pretending that would be easy.

Regardless though, thanks again for taking the time to read.

I think that there are a few interesting directions to go for combat. One would be to abstract combat - sort of the Europa Universalis approach. Another would be to permit some degree of detailed combat - Master of Magic, or like the old boardgame Titan. I think that this model could be a good one - with a handful of fixed tactical maps you could hardcode AI players to give a decent challenge with a modest number of units. And a third would be a more full-blown tactical combat system - opportunity fire, supporting fire, etc. I suspect that the latter would be too far afield.

And I used auto-resolve in games like MOO2 all of the time - you reduce your chance of winning a bit, but if you already have a steamroller set in motion that's not truly crucial. So the tactical for those who like it, and not for those who don't, does seem like a reasonable approach.

If there is one thing that we learned from the Civ 5 debacle, it's that people experience and use Civ-like games in a diversity of ways; this makes a modular approach important for success.

 

[Nares]

Have you played a game on the Earth Map with accurate start locations as Rome?

I don't play the Earth maps. I don't believe they translate well at all to the Civilization series. Consider that the vast vast majority of the Earth's surface is water, and the Civilization series has never provided an adequate naval warfare model.

A 1-tile wide Italian peninsula is probably being generous, and the expectation for a playable Europe is ridiculous. Realistically, few European nations would register as larger than one tile, let alone large enough for a one-tile radius around the city, and only the largest European nations at the height of their expansion would constitute anything larger.

For me, the greater disconnect is in the size of cities in comparison to the overall landmass. I'm already throwing that sense of realism out the window when I play any Civilzation title; why shouldn't I be equally willing to ignore the disproportionality between units and landmass as well?

The tactical overlay becomes a question of playability; it's cumbersome in the vast majority of cases, and auto-resolve is traditionaly inadequate. I strongly dislike accepting a penalty as a result of ceding tactical control to the AI because I don't like the extra time it takes to setup and resolve each battle.

I think CiV's system is actually a great improvement over the MoO system, though MoO perhaps benefitted more from tactical overlay because of the greater sense of freedom of movement associated with space combat. CiV's tactical combat is directly accessible; there are no delays associated with transferring to and from the tactical overlay. Additionally, it avoids the issue of accepting penalties as a time saver.

Does the CiV tactical AI need improvement? Absolutely. Will it ever be truly competitive with a human? I seriously hope not; if it is, then we're probably in the age of self-aware machines and should begin worrying about Skynet taking over. Can it be sufficient that, given the traditional production and research bonuses AIs receive, the AI can successfuly wage war against a human? I believe so. And that's really the only target at the moment.

It's not like CIV had such a great strategic AI. The AI was only ever challenging through brute force, enabled by AI specific bonuses. I don't understand why we expect a higher level of design for CiV, but it seems many people do.

And, I return to my other point; 1UPT seems so awful because we're left to dwell on it as a result of CiV's many many other failings.

Modding it away, though, still leaves plenty of other issues that need to be addressed which were -- apparently -- created to make 1UPT "work."

I don't necessarily agree that every poor design decision was made specifically to facilitate 1UPT. CiV reeks of poor leadership/vision, and many (most) of those poor decisions could as easily have been implemented even if the concept of 1UPT had never been entertained.

It's really easy for us to sit here and armchair speculate why some decisions were made; do roads have a maintenance cost because it helps restrict unit flow and minimizes the human player's advantages inherent in 1UPT, or is it true that they only have a maintenance cost because (some) developers were sick of infinite road spam?

Given some of the design decisions that are totally unrelated to 1UPT, such as diplomacy, the tech tree, city states or even social policies, I'm willing to fully believe roads have a maintenance cost only because infinite roads "look ugly."

No - because the folks critiquing Sulla don't want the Civ 5 combat model altered at all.

I'm sure there are some changes that I would be comfortable with, but a wholesale jump to tactical overlay is definitely not one of them.

I would rather the rest of the game be improved (dramtically), so that combat in general is no longer the majority (engaging) content.

The challenge, of course, would be writing a good auto-resolve function to make sure it all worked, and I'm not pretending that would be easy.

If you achieved this, you may as well have written a tactical AI which better handles small scale combat in the current strategic overlay. The only downside is you won't see those massively epic battles of hundreds or thousands of "units," but A) we're already fighting with such numbers from a demographic sense, we just don't view it as such, and B) it's a bit of a pipe dream and probably better suited to a game wholly devoted to tactical combat (*cough*panzergeneral*cough*), but I'm sure you're already aware of that.

 

[r_rolo1]

Tactical auto-resolve is the complete negation of the usefulness of a tactical window , not mentioning that it brings along a lot of meta-gaming stuff around about when to use the auto-resolve ( cough *TW series* cough ... for a example, very rarely I tried to battle in the tactical window in any of the TW games , simply because in most of the situations the AI retreats the beaten units to the central plaza that you need to capture to win, so you would need to beat the same unit atleast 2 times ... meaning more casualties than the auto-resolve, that treated the siege as a regular battle barring that the sieged would lose all if it lost, no matter how many survivors it would have ).

To be honest, the only solution that IMHO would fit minimally well in the civ series about this issue of trying to make something tactical in a strategic-based game, like the civ games clearly are, would be, besides making the distances between cities forcefully bigger ( otherwise we have heavy manouver issues ) , would be allowing stacking but with some kind of penalties to big stacks ( either inbuilt limits by tile ( paradox games style ) or by giving combat penalties for the simple fact of stacking them ( to the point that stacks would be good for marching ( making the clogging less of a issue) but worse than useless for combat )). Even that would not be not even close of a perfect solution...

Maybe we simply asking too much when we want a game both good in strategic and tactic affairs :/

 

[Solo4114]

Thanks to those of you who took the time to read the very long article. I agree that some of these ideas are rough around the edges and need more polishing. Some areas I've had further thoughts on, and could say more about them now, but honestly this is already monstrously long for a project that's never going to happen. I'm not willing to compromise on the combat system though. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of room for refinement, but this is the way I'd want to implement things if I were actually making this game. The objections are tactical/strategic levels are combat are perfectly correct, I'm not disagreeing with you guys on that. At the same time, I don't see a better way to implement very large scale battles with 100s or 1000s of units on both sides, which is something that I've always dreamed of having in Civilization. If you stay on the strategic map, the system will simply bog down with too many units. As I wrote in the article, I'd make sure to have an auto-resolve combat feature so that players could totally ignore the tactical map if desired. The challenge, of course, would be writing a good auto-resolve function to make sure it all worked, and I'm not pretending that would be easy.

Regardless though, thanks again for taking the time to read.

Thanks for writing it! I've found your other posts to be excellent reads (although I still haven't finished this one yet), and I've actually pointed others towards them when trying to explain my own concerns with Civ 5.

I also think that writing this kind of stuff -- especially when it comes from people who were involved in the testing of previous entries -- can be helpful....if the folks at Firaxis bother to take a look at it. Even if people don't agree with everything, it provides a starting point for a real discussion other than simply "This sucks. Fix it," vs. "No!!! I like it! Don't touch anything!"


As for the combat, I never really minded the combat in MOO1 or MOO2, except at the point where combat was a largely foregone conclusion. Even so, sometimes it was still fun just to see your ships trash the enemy fleet. Heroes of Might and Magic had similar issues. I think the key is in programming an autoresolver that doesn't make the game a cakewalk and which likewise doesn't produce ridiculous results like having your "fleet/stack o' doom" reduced so dramatically that autoresolve becomes suicidal. As you say, that's no mean task.

Still, if folks want tactical (and I'm not completely convinced they do), that's really the only way to do it, unless you completely change the scale of the Civ map and everything on it.

What exactly is the problem with that? No space for units? There could be a possibility to stack units in cities. I too think the problem is not 1UPT per se but the way it was implemented.

The problem is indeed no space for units. If you get a city-state like, say, Belgrade to your northeast, and the alps to your immediate north, you basically have one hex in or out. Great for defense. Crap for sending forth Rome's legions to conquer Europe. England's got it even worse. They get, what, 3 hexes? Maybe 6? Something like that. Plus, you can't even get your units OFF the island until you develop optics, thanks to the fact that Triremes cannot carry units and you don't have Galleys either. Just optics for embarkation. Japan has a similar problem, but at least you can fit 2-3 cities on Honshu.

And while this is a problem with the Earth map, you can end up with similar problems on a randomly generated map. You simply won't have enough room to move your troops around. It's like a mini "carpet of doom" scenario. Carpet of doom at least requires that your production be sufficient to crank out units, but you can get completely locked in, if you don't have the ability to maneuver.

So, 1UPT is a problem in and of itself. Although it's a much farther reaching problem than simply "My units can't move and I can't build enough units!"

I think that there are a few interesting directions to go for combat. One would be to abstract combat - sort of the Europa Universalis approach. Another would be to permit some degree of detailed combat - Master of Magic, or like the old boardgame Titan. I think that this model could be a good one - with a handful of fixed tactical maps you could hardcode AI players to give a decent challenge with a modest number of units. And a third would be a more full-blown tactical combat system - opportunity fire, supporting fire, etc. I suspect that the latter would be too far afield.

Yeah, full tactical detail would be very difficult. That's like a game unto itself. Hell, they ARE games unto themselves in many cases!

I think you either need to do the hybrid "tactics light" model of MOO, with an option to autoresolve (and an autoresolve that doesn't mean "barely surviving to win"), or you need to do some kind of larger strategic abstraction. Limitations on how many units can occupy a tile (more than 1, less than 1,500,000), supply limits, weakening/slowing larger armies, etc. Something to keep the game loosely grounded in reality so that you can't field twenty times your civilization's population as an army of abstracted "units."

 

[bryanw1995]

sooooo... after reading the writeup I'm ready to play this game now. as in, RIGHT NOW. sulla, how quickly do you think you could make it?

seriously, lots of great concepts. I wonder if brian reynolds is bored with building facebook games yet... hmmmm...

 

[lschnarch]

No - because the folks critiquing Sulla don't want the Civ 5 combat model altered at all.

I don't agree.
I am pretty sure though that 95% of the Civ5 fans would be happy with any game without proper combat AI.

Regardless though, thanks again for taking the time to read.

It was a pleasure, although I don't agree with many of your suggestions.

Maybe I will take the time tomorrow or the days after to go into more detail of where I think your ideas still lack a bit.

 

[Ktulu]

A lot of good ideas, although perhaps a little too slanted to CIV4. One thought that hasn't been discussed...

Why is espionage always an afterthought in the Civ series? Knowledge is power. This needs to be represented in the game. In order to learn about your enemies you should have to invest resources. You shouldn't by default know what techs, how much money, army size, number of cities, etc, etc, your foes have.

Sending a spy unit around the map was silly, but the concept of investing in espionage was one of the greatest additions to the series IMO.

 

[ImperialGuard]

I think it would be safe to say that the more "granular" combat is in the game (1upt, tactical combat screen etc), the worse the AI will perform.

Abstraction/auto-resolve/stacks (the same thing??) at least would give the software developer a better opportunity to code a decent AI.

 

[Gatsby]

If another civ game is made, there are two considerations which imo should be front-and-center of the designers' minds throughout the design process:

1) Economical system requirements. I don't want to have to go out and buy the latest super-duper top-of-the-line deluxe computer because my current computer which I bought brand-new 2 years ago isn't capable of running the game properly. There's little if any need for high-end cgi wonder videos and ultra-spiffy animated leaderheads in a civ game anyway;

2) Maximum flexibility. I want to be able to customise my civ games as much as possible without having to be an expert modder. There should be a diverse range of game options, with standard default settings of game options which you can turn off and on as you please. Doing it this way might mean it takes longer to properly balance the game, but it would enhance replayability.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

On the other hand, if the theory is "We want to implement tactical combat," you really don't have any other options aside from doing one of two things: (1) switch to a smaller-scale tactical map and fight your battles that way, or (2) turn the main map into a tactical map. Personally, I think #1 is a LOT friendlier to the Civ model than #2, which requires a whole rethinking of the scale of the game and all manner of scaling aspects.

Considering how weirdly inaccurate the "geography" of maps is (even when huge!), i would detect some wild opportunities with both #1 & 2; make the whole Italian Peninsula worth much more than 3-5 hexes when zooming into an extra tactical layer.
Just imagine the new immersive diversity and the entire ruleset consequences... territory, resources, road networks, defensive elements, suburban areas, etc.
While the city of Rome may have a virtual range spanning all the way to Athens (61 tiles, remember?) as of now, the principle of vision & reality remains; hump in a boat to reach Corsica or Sicilia.

Random worlds just got a whole lot bigger with some "secondary" gameplay elements - combat model (be it tactical or not, btw) included.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Did I really read a bit that said city towers should have an infinite (tactical map) range? I hope I was hallucinating.

Which actually reminded me of the WarCraft (certainly not WoW_MMPORPG but only the initial title that started it all.) Towers.
Dumping cannon balls on troops, shooting arrows - now *THAT* was some tricky but efficient tactical positioning by design.

PS; After reading up further down this wonderful thread (even Sulla chimed in!), i realized people brought back the infamous subject of Stacks and as i said in many earlier comments in this forum; From 1upT, to Stacks, to SOD, to Carpets of Stacks, to Carpets of Stacks of Doom... that's how it goes. No matter how fine-tuned any concept of Stacks are, it will always lead to the very same clug effect we already have with 1upT -- only on a much worse & monumentally (un-micmanageable!) complex scale.

 

[JohnnyW]

I didn't agree with it before, but now after reading this thread and thinking more deeply about it I'm thoroughly convinced that tactical warfare does not belong in Cvilization; this is counter to what Sullla suggests. I believe an AI simply will never be competent enough to compete with a human on a tactical level - at least not ones programmed by Firaxis.

Ragardless, I actually find that my mindset is completely altered when I go from strategic to tactical planning. In civ5 this is really detrimental because the tactical arena makes me feel like I'm beating up a child; it breaks my immersion from the strategic side of the game. Or maybe that is precisely the reason why my mindset is altered in the first place.

I love tactical games like Tactics Ogre for example, but I don't think like that gameplay belongs in a Civilization game.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Stongly Disagree
Tactical map
Even with a checkbox for auto-resolve, if the units are designed for tactical combat, their bonuses and the mechanics would be based around it.
Also tactical combat makes combat too hard for a Human to calculate... unlike Every other part of civ where a Human can calculate it (1-3 steps of simple arithmetic)


.... example of a Strategic model.
The entire Stack has a particular strength, based on its location, and what units are in it and the enemy stack (my stack gets stronger if I have many spears and you have many horses... or if I have a lot of ranged unit and you have a lot of melee units.)
Stack has a ZOC that allows it a chance of intercepting enemy Stacks
Damage is done altogether.. easily calculated
..Strategic part..healing damage has economic Costs to heal. Probably varying by location (how fast you heal definitely, but also the cost of healing)

Like

Scale of units..might even extend this to buildings. (build multiple marketplaces, but they require pop to run)

"Immobile Units"..ie Towers

"Growth" of 'Civics' and Tile improvements... 'locking in' is definitely a good idea

Reserve Fund for Production. I would allow it to be spent on multiple worlds Though.


Disagree with
AI 'not trying to win' ie the AI plays by different rules (ie they can't attack if you give them gold)..see Happiness below

No Rebels/Flips... this is too vital to helping builders be strong.. (I agree with the randomness being bad.. Rebels need to be predictable.. see below)

Happiness=city pop cap
I'd rather combine Happiness into Stability
ie
A city has Stability costs based on
# cities in your empire
Distance from Capital
Local Improvements
Size of city
Diplomatic situations (such as declaring war on someone that did things to make you like them..applies to both Human AND AI)
Local situations
Foreign Culture
Etc.
Then if you have insufficient Gold to pay the Stability costs for a city, It would generate Rebels. The Rebels would semi-intelligently focus on "liberating" the city. (either joining the civ it feels the most cultural affinity to or forming a new civ)
You could also have "Anarchy" in those cases.. ie your "Civics" could get "pillaged"

Would ADD
Culture... culture should do something besides tiles+culture wins. Civ 5 gave it a good role
I'd like to see culture produced by a city go to
1. Claiming Tiles
2. Excess going to neighboring and Connected cities to affect Stability (lowering the stability of enemy cities and raising the stability of freindly ones).. essentially making cities around the entire world more "your cities"
This would allow culture and trade routes to be keys to conquest, rather than just some "race to the finish line"

Union...There should be an ability for two civs to merge, so that they are effectively one. This would have major stability/happiness costs, especially in the short term. Significant diplomatic bonuses would be needed to prevent the populations from revolting. This would allow AIs that Try to win.. but stay friendly.


Unit Repair/Healing/Upgrade costs. (I'd make units use the Imperial Reserve for Repair/Healing.. as well as upgrades... This makes "damaging" units almost as costly as killing them... thus avoiding some of the Stack of Doom.)


Technology bleed should be much stronger.




Minor Points
City-States were a good idea. Perhaps however, have a game with a few civs "the players" starting at an advantage and others starting at a disadvantage... possibly later in the game.. without some techs. So they play by all the same rules, but they are handicapped in the beginning. (maybe they don't get the AI difficulty bonuses until they reach a certain size/level of development)

 

[Tee Kay]

From 1upT, to Stacks, to SOD, to Carpets of Stacks, to Carpets of Stacks of Doom... that's how it goes.

Well we'll find some way to make it stop at "Stacks". There are some good ideas in the Ideas and Suggestions forums.

it will always lead to the very same clug effect we already have with 1upT -- only on a much worse & monumentally (un-micmanageable!) complex scale.

I don't know. I find Civ4 stacks quite easy to manage actually.

 

[Poke]

Carpets of stacks of doom are rugs of doom. Smaller area than a carpet but thicker